


Oh God, I want to feel again

by SlarStarsFanFics



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: 3-shot, Angst For Angsts Sake, Apocalypse, Asexual Luther Hargreeves, Asexual Number Five | The Boy, Asexual Number Six | Ben Hargreeves, Blood and gore mentions, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Depression, Gen, Hallucinations, Isolation, Luther Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Me Stretching My Poetry Muscles, Non-Romantic Yearning, Number Five | The Boy Needs A Hug, Number Six | Ben Hargreeves Needs a Hug, Sensory Deprivation, Touch-Starved, because I say so
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-21 18:07:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30025761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SlarStarsFanFics/pseuds/SlarStarsFanFics
Summary: A study in touch
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	Oh God, I want to feel again

**Author's Note:**

> Oof so. Am I projecting?? Maybe. These are gonna be short because they’re just supposed to be warmups for a bigger thing I’m working on rn.  
> Title is from Touch by Sleeping At Last, content warnings are in the tags

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It leaves a dark pit in his stomach. It threatens to overwhelm him. He feels as if he’s floating. Not even in a tank like Diego used to, that would imply water and touch, but in space. In total nothingness, he stayed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title is from the song of the same name by Flatsound. TWs are in the tags!!!

_Sometimes I feel like I’m not solid. I'm hollow. There’s nothing behind my eyes. I’m a negative of a person. All I want is blackness, blackness and silence._

  * _Sylvia Plath_



* * *

Ben Hargreeves leads a strange afterlife. He isn’t alive, he might as well not exist. It leaves a dark pit in his stomach. It threatens to overwhelm him. He feels as if he’s floating. Not even in a tank like Diego used to, that would imply water and touch, but in space. In total nothingness, he stayed.

One night, when he is too tired to care, and Klaus is too high to listen, he bares a part of his soul.

“I would do anything to feel something again.”

A hug, a hand, a pinch, a head wound, a gunshot. Anything. The last thing he ever felt was a hand on his face, the other pressed to whatever wound was the largest. Trying in vain to stop the inevitable. Ben just wished the inevitable had been more comfortable.

_Can we go see the ocean?_

The idea of water in his skin makes him want to cry. Cool wet sweeping over him, salt sticking to his skin and chapping his lips. Freezing water sending a shiver down his spine and weighing down his clothes. He never got to go to the beach as a child. He’d always wanted to. He’d never gotten to. 

The first thing his hands touch after the cold linoleum floor, slick with his blood, is his brother’s jaw. Is he always going to be destined for violence? His life was defined by blood and vomit and viscera. His death; by hollow helplessness.

He yearned for gentleness. He remembered it. It was a ghost, just like him, in the back of his mind. Luther would let him hold his hand when he got nervous. Diego held him close after training, ignoring the guts covering his uniform. Allison always came alongside him and linked arms. He missed her smile. Klaus was a tactile child. Linked pinkies, arms over shoulders, anything. Their father forbade it. 

Five would grip a shoulder, or an arm. He was solid and constant. Until he wasn’t. Vanya would draw closer to him than anyone else, looping her arms around his neck and putting her head on his shoulder. 

Luther asks for his input. Of course Klaus has to be a translator, but the feeling that comes with acknowledgment is overwhelming. He grips the army jacket on his brother’s shoulder and braces himself. 

He feels more often. Whenever Klaus _allows_ him to. That fact makes his skin crawl. Or whatever the alternative is when you can’t feel. On occasion he is touched. It doesn’t feel right, though. Nothing like what he remembered. It feels separated. Distant. Like a pillow of air is cushioning everything, even though he’s certain his hand is fully grasping the object. Klaus often avoids touching him. He says that Ben feels cold. 

_Ghosts can’t time travel_

“I’m here! I’m here, I exist! Talk to me!”

The brother he’d lost within arms reach, and he couldn’t even come close. 

As much as he knows he should, he doesn’t feel guilty about possessing Klaus. The joy that comes with feeling whole again banishes any thought of it. He can feel everything. The sun bakes his skin, a gentle breeze ruffles him. The metal gate is freezing somehow. He has an impulse to eat one of the oranges. When was the last time he’d eaten something? Years ago. Did mom cook it? Or was it a donut that he’d secretly bought before a mission. He can’t remember. The juice is cold and contrastes so well with the heat of the sun. But it’s _sour_! And he delights even in that. 

He walks into a large patch of dirt, prepared to carry seeds and cultivate them to maturity. Like a father should. He banishes that thought as soon as it comes. The warm dirt squishes between his toes. The sensation was overwhelming and yet, it was everything. He fell face-first into it and let the heat of the sun roam his back, while his underside soaked up warmth like the soon-to-be planted seeds would nutrients.

_I love dirt_

Jill’s hands don’t touch him the way he’d imagined. The way he’d daydreamed about an embarrassing amount of times. They're grabby, rough, and for a lack of better words, _horny._ He's uncomfortable with that for a variety of reasons, (certainly not least of all that this was Klaus’ body, not his. And that’s wrong for a whole other amalgamation of reasons.) Most of all, though, is that he’s never, ever wanted that. Not alive, not dead. Never. Maybe he was too young when he was alive, and too, well, dead to feel it, but it didn’t change the fact he didn’t want it. But despite his strangled protests, she keeps touching him. Panic chokes him. 

Diego is his saviour, as always. And he is in awe. He’s not talking into the void anymore. He’s talking _to_ his brother. And that brother hugs him. It’s the first hug Ben has had in an uncountable amount of time. And he sighs.

Diego is warm. He’s practically buzzing with life, and as jealous as that makes Ben, it’s also the most comforting thing he’s ever felt. 

Vanya needed him. He’s the only one who can help. She’s caught, swimming in her head and causing more damage than she could ever imagine. So he dives in and swims next to her. Pulls her head above water the best he can, even as his body dissolves into the water. He _holds her hand!_ It’s cold and clammy, but more alive than he’d ever felt. She holds his right back, rubs the pad of her thumb on his knuckle. He wants to cry. Oh how badly he wants to cry.

_Can you hug me as I go? It’s been a long time since-_

Vanya is quick to oblige. She’s just as small as he remembers her being. And as lost as she was a moment ago, she’s still so very alive. She emits the same buzz as Diego, bringing peace to his real final moments. He feels tears slip, and he hasn’t been able to cry for a very long time. It had always been pent up inside of him, aching and overwhelmed, like a dam. Or maybe a water balloon that didn’t hit the ground quite hard enough. Ready to burst at any moment, but it just can’t. 

As the last bits of him broke away, he hopes that he will simply cease. The pain of life and afterlife was enough, he’s finished. All used up and tired. Exhaustion has overwhelmed him and it burrows deep into his marrow. It has been there for years, a steady ache he could never rid himself of. All he wants is the nothingness that Atheists preach. The thing he’s been denied since the ripe old age of 17. 

Let him rest.


End file.
